THE MENNONITE BROTHERHOOD IN RUSSIA (1789 - 1910), P. M. Friesen, 1911

ssen in the wrong with his demand? Is his point of view an exaggerated one, as the majority of the elders charged, which derived from a one-sided interpretation of the Holy Scriptures? Does he contradict his own confessional writings? Do the confessional writings of the Mennonites [which Claassen and his companions quoted on January 6] and the Holy Scriptures teach the errors Claassen and his companions adhere to? If the elders, at their conference [of January 18] had been able to see and hear the undeniable and unconcealable truth enunciated by their opponents and begun to root out the abuses, a reconciliation could still have been possible and the rift avoided. [He quotes the statement of the brethren of January 23.] Should one have praised and approved the fact that they turned these people over to the civil authorities without further ado? I trust everyone will grant that the conference of elders [of January §104 250 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH 18] chose the most inappropriate and unspiritual means wherewith to avoid a separation, . . . and thereby . . . prematurely braided a martyr’s crown ... for Claassen and his companions. . . . How much saner and more refreshing is the pronouncement of the Ohrloff congregation. . . . Given the kind of outlook [of the five elders] prevailing among those who should have judged spiritual matters in a spiritual manner, withdrawal from the church, more than ever before, became a matter of conscience for Claassen and his adherents . . . [In addition, Dobbert sharply reprimands the excesses of the ‘Exuberant Movement’ and, from his Lutheran standpoint, cannot understand how the Brethren could claim the right to establish their own church and confirm teachers (ministers) through their own authority; but Claassen, in his most humble petition of May 15, 1862, clearly establishes the ecclesiastical and civil right to do so from a Mennonite point of view. Dobbert continues]: It is not these aberrations, but the essential truth, stated and developed above, which the Brethren captured, in contrast to the rotten and disordered character of the fellowship out of which the so-called ‘Huepfer’ came, that is the cause, even today [1864], for their increase in number, that new members are constantly being added to them through baptism.” [The complete document is given under #1 70.] §105 10. Johann Claassen’s petition of May 15, 1862, to His Majesty on behalf of the Molotschna brethren (along with those of the already - constituted Einlage M.B. Church in the Chortitza District, which had also sent its representative in the person of Gerhard Wieler to St. Petersburg, and who also submitted a petition to the monarch which said essentially the same thing as Claassen’s, cf. XIX ff.), along with the request for unrestricted civil activity and passports, culminated in the following presentation of the fundamental Mennonite principles and ecclesiastical rights, contained in